The Last Straw

Expecting a little down time, Vermeulen joins his partner Tessa Bishonga on a research trip to the US/Mexican border in Arizona. Instead he is drawn into the investigation of a murdered skeleton found in the Sonoran desert. The dead man’s notebook contains Vermeulen’s phone number. The local authorities are looking for evidence of trafficking networks and interrogate Vermeulen. He has no choice but to dig into the case himself.

As Bishonga and Vermeulen delve into the inhuman and dangerous world of refugees and migrants, dark forces take notice. A killer, who evaded justice seven years earlier, sees an opportunity for revenge. Cartels aim to eliminate the interlopers. A right-wing militia wants to teach Bishonga a lesson.

Set against the tragic border policies of the United States, Vermeulen and Bishonga face their biggest challenges yet, and the threats aren’t only coming from the criminals.

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Praise for The Last Straw

Vermeulen’s “girlfriend invites him along on a study of the awful border situation in Arizona. A murder victim there has Vermeulen’s phone number in his pocket. Why? The investigator talked to him briefly 10 years ago but barely remembers him. What’s going on? The search for an answer lets author Niemann display his gifts as a first-class action writer with Vermeulen navigating a world of institutional cruelty, where “America’s war on immigrants has been farmed out to the private sector.” Gunfights, a stalking by a skilled female mercenary, and a cinematic clash with a trafficking cartel are so well done as to invite the cliché ‘pulse-pounding.'” Booklist

Photos

Corronado National Monument. The border wall cuts right through it.

Abandoned buildings in Naco. Few Mexicans visit the US after intrusive border inspections.

View from La Roca Shelter

Private Prisons to detain migrants

Excerpt

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The students were part of the Undocumented Migrants Project, a summer program run by the anthropology department of the University of Arizona. Their professor, Alain Ponce, had told them to collect, tag and bag each of the discarded items they’d found piled up in a shallow dip. Backpacks, gallon-size water containers, clothing and all the other human-made artifacts migrants had left in the hollow. It was tedious work, and having to wear nitrile gloves made the work more miserable.

Still, nobody complained openly. They had signed up because they believed the work was important. Analyzing contemporary human behavior right here in the US had attracted them. It seemed more relevant than trying to understand human practices in some exotic locale or of some long-forgotten civilization. The extra credit didn’t hurt either.

“Funny that they should all decide to drop their stuff right here,” a blond student said. He wore long pants, a long-sleeved shirt—both made from some high-tech fabric—and a broad brimmed hat. The others were covered as well, but their clothes didn’t have the fresh creases from the outdoor store anymore. The long sleeves and pants were obligatory. Without protection, a couple of hours in this sun would burn their skin.

“It’s not funny at all,” a red-haired student replied. She’d slathered every bare bit of her skin with SPF 50+ sunscreen. “First, this place is lower, so you can stop and rest here and not be seen by the Border Patrol. Second, they are exhausted and just want to lighten the load. Third, as Alain said, at this point they know they’ve made it across the border and they change clothes and try to not look like someone who’s just hiked across the desert.”

Professor Ponce stood near the edge of the field of discards writing in a notebook. Of medium height, he had a round face and black hair under his straw hat.

The blond student muttered something about know-it-alls, but he didn’t do it quietly enough, so the red-haired student retorted, “If you hadn’t skipped so much of the orientation, you wouldn’t say inane things.”

“I was just making conversation. It’s so fucking dull, picking up and labeling crappy backpacks from a Mexican Walmart. There’s nothing special about them. I could just go to the Walmart in Tucson and get the same packs.”

The red-haired woman stood up and wiped her forehead. “It’s not the damn backpacks. It’s that they are artifacts of human migration. That’s what we study.”

“Yup, that’s anthropology for ya,” a third student said. He was older than the first two. His outfit showed the wear and tear of multiple summers in rough terrain. “Pick, tag and bag. It’d be no different if these were Aztec vessels. Although you’d have to be a hell of a lot more careful with those.”

A scream cut across the hollow. It came from a blonde student the others
called Barbie because she had an uncanny resemblance to the doll, including the pointy boobs. She stood, frozen, her finger pointing at a pile of things next to her.

Ponce ran over to her. The others followed suit, the blond guy being the last one to see why Barbie had screamed and why the others stood there agape.

A skeletonized human arm was sticking out from the debris.